Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis step up crackdown on aid workers

In their latest wave of arrests, Houthi rebels in Yemen have jailed scores of people for celebrating a national holiday on what the Iran-backed militia considers the wrong date.

"Since 1962, Yemenis have celebrated September 26 as the birth of the Yemen Arab Republic," said Thomas Juneau, a Middle East analyst and professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada.

"However, for the Houthis, that date symbolically marks a very clear threat to their legitimacy," he said, adding that "any celebration of September 26 can be perceived as a call for a return to a republican Yemen, which is antithetical to what the Houthis stand for."

Instead, the Houthis have sought to enforce September 21 as the country's national holiday.

On that day in 2014, the militia — which was redesignated as terror organization by the US in January 2024 — took over Yemen's capital, Sanaa.

This resulted in a civil war between the Houthis and Yemen's internationally recognized government. The situation escalated in 2015 when a Saudi-led international coalition joined in support of the government.

Since then, the country has been effectively split in two. The northwest, including Sanaa and around 70% of the population, is under the control of the Houthis, while the government, which is meanwhile represented by a Presidential Council, presides in the southern port city Aden. The Southern Transitional Council, a separatist group allied with the Presidential Council and backed by the United Arab Emirates, also controls territories to the east

Saudi Arabia, however, has been increasingly open about its wish to exit the conflict and has already met with Houthi representatives for peace negotiations.

"The Houthis have won the civil war in a way over the past few years but they run a very authoritarian and repressive government in northern Yemen," Juneau told DW. "They tolerate absolutely no dissent, neither Republican or otherwise."

Despite winning, crackdown escalates

"The Houthis have demonstrated far more interest in ensuring Yemen remains at war than they have shown in actually governing it," said Niku Jafarnia, Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch.

"The majority of the population living in the territories they control lack basic necessities like food and water," she added.

Yemeni civilians have been bearing the brunt of the brutal war for the past decade.

Around half of the 38.5 million population depends on humanitarian aid, hunger is on the rise and severe levels of food deprivation have doubled in Houthi-controlled areas since last year, Joyce Msuya, a senior official in the UN aid coordination office, said in October.

The United Nations and human rights organizations have repeatedly pointed out that Yemenis are suffering under one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, which has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. And the country's humanitarian situation is likely to worsen in the near future.

Since May, the Houthis have been arresting an increasing number of international staff. Around 50 members of the UN, humanitarian organizations and civil society staff have been arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations confirmed in October.

"The arbitrary detention of humanitarian personnel and the false accusations against them continue to significantly hinder our ability to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance in Yemen," said Msuya on October 15.

In October, several heads of UN entities and international nongovernmental organizations such as UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO and Oxfam renewed their call for the "immediate release of their staff arbitrarily detained by the Houthi de facto authorities in Yemen." This came in response to the latest Houthi announcement that the detainees would face "criminal prosecution" in the near future.

However, there is no such thing as due process, fair trials, transparency and accountability in the judicial system that the Houthis have established, said Yemen observer Juneau.

Hisham Al-Omeisy, a conflict analyst with the European Institute of Peace and former information resources center director with the US Mission to Yemen, agrees. "This [the announced prosecution] is a pretty bad sign," he told DW, adding that this "means that they're moving ahead with sentencing, and a lot of people are bracing for death sentences."

'Houthis feel vulnerable'

The Houthis' escalation against locals as well as international aid workers could be explained by the fact that "the Houthis feel they need to further consolidate their power," said Juneau.

The financial situation in the areas they govern is anything but solid, the humanitarian situation is dire and the fact that the Houthis have not managed to gain control over the entire country make them feel vulnerable, he explained.

The group is also under increasing international pressure. Following the Hamas terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 and the resulting war in Gaza, the Houthis began targeting international shipping lanes in the Red Sea in a bid to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

While the attacks have boosted the group's popularity at home, they have also resulted in US and Israeli strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.

"Last week's US strikes with B-2 bombers further increased pressure on the Houthis," said Al-Omeisy. In his view, the militia is bracing for things "to get bad."

"After the Israelis went after the Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, the Houthis now fear that they are next in line," he added.

"In turn, they've jailed a lot more people in Sanaa, including people from their own ranks, because they became so paranoid that their ranks have been infiltrated," he said. "They are in full panic mode, and at the same time, they don't want to show that they are afraid."

Edited by: Martin Kuebler